A Primer on Volatility Indices

Download PDF Introduction On Friday October 13th, Cboe (Chicago Boards of Exchanges) officially launched four new volatility credit indices. In the current high interest rate environment, investors are becoming increasingly wary of the aggregated impact of high rates on highly levered balance sheet, thus increasing the relevance of the new Read more…

Market Recap 15/10/2023

Download PDF USA This week in the US, we observed a market recovery following the previous week’s declines, driven largely by the robust Non-Farm Payrolls data. However, by the week’s conclusion, this optimism had waned somewhat, with the S&P managing only a modest 0.4% increase. Leading the way was the Read more…

Vintage Private Equity Deals: Merlin Entertainment – Learnings from one of Blackstone’s Most Successful Investments

Download PDF Introduction In 2005, Blackstone’s [NYSE: BX] private equity fund made a, for its size, relatively modest investment of £102m to acquire Merlin Entertainment, a theme parks company, from the private equity fund Hermes Equity Partners. This was the first step in its strategy of rolling up the attractions Read more…

An Overview of Now-casting Methods

Download PDF Introduction Now-casting methods are a class of forecasting models originally used in meteorology, and that later found useful applications in economics and finance. The first paper that generalizes the use of now-casting methods in economics is Giannone, Reichlin, and Small (2008). The idea of now-casting is that high-frequency Read more…